THIS had better not be my fifteen minutes of fame...

 Dear god in heaven, what the holy blue fuck.

When I sit down to make a new post, I check my stats first. To see if there is anyone out there, anywhere, picking up what I'm putting down.

So far, so not really. Oh, I do have hits. Sometimes up to twenty a day. From all over the world. For ONE. STINKING. PAGE. A page entitled, "Time doth flit; oh, shit." People from all over the whole entire world are looking up this phrase, I guess to see what it means? And my blog entry usually comes up right near the top in the searches. Occasionally it's the first one. Yes, I check this. Hoping it will not be true.

This...just floors me. And frustrates me, will I be principally known as the blogger who provided an explanation for who said this and possibly what it means. It's like...going viral for pointing at the exit in a clever way, "This way to the Great EGRESS." Except in this version that's what people wanted.

Okay, that analogy doesn't quite work like I want it too.

Yes, I could change the title of the post. At least, I think that would work. Eventually it would stop showing up in searches. Or I could delete the page all together. But I shouldn't have to! For one, it has a brief story about an interaction with sons. And for another, MY OWN SPARKLING WIT AND PERSONALITY SHOULD WIN OUT!!!!

Okay. Okay. I'm just going to delete the offending material. I mean, edit the page.

Your days are numbered, Dottie. Victory will be mine!!

There. Done. I win. You can't make me be famous for something stupid! Only I can make myself famous for something stupid!

Bonsai tree: I think it's a juniper? The tag only said bonsai.

Here's a "for me" update. It will probably be dull for you but I'm trying to get my balance back.

Well, November was -- rough. I love our little family Thanksgiving and we only have a small feast, but the gearing up and preparation and the driving and the shopping and all -- it's hard on my, er, psyche? So things slid by the way side. I was doing really well up until November 1st. I had been using my bullet journal, doing my book work consistently, crossing stuff offa da list on the regular. I wanted to add in a cleaning schedule and --

I probably should NOT have tried to do that before a holiday. Note to self: don't add new things into the routine before any kind of holiday, trip, visit, brain-draining-spoon-gobbling interactions, or general what-have-youse.

Before I tripped and skinned my mental knee, I was doing better with a single weekly blog update on Saturday. I did four weeks in a row! We're all set! It's habit now, right? RIGHT!? 

It was not habit yet.

I was thinking this morning, since I've missed so many -- wait, how many? Counting....oof, five. I was thinking this morning, as I drove to the post office, I've missed so many, should I do a quick update today? But the schedule is for Saturday, sez Myself. We can wait.

Myself is lazy and would prefer to play Skyrim for several hours. One day I'll write a book about Self and Myself. She's lazy and sort of  mean, but I think she's were my humour comes from and lawd, can't lose that. But Myself doesn't make the rules, Self does and we're making one today and Saturday.

A few months ago I bought a bonsai tree at Meijer. Oh -- I'm going to change the subject. I bought a bonsai tree, I think it's a juniper? And despite being in basic potting soil in a very small pot that did not have a drainage hole, in a window with only about four hours of light a day, it's done just fine. I finally bought a bonsai pot and soil for it and repotted it and I am just so pleased with it, I think it's a happy plant.

My little juniper in a proper bonsai pot,
with proper bonsai soil and new rock friends.

With no effort on my part my Christmas cactus is getting ready to bloom.
I looked it up. My chilly home office has the perfect conditions for bloomage.

I was going to define the word fortitude too, but the non-hurricanes took up all my time.

 Well, dear readers, today's posit: "Does the west coast of the United States get hurricanes? You know: California, the Pacific coast, and Oregon and stuff?"

Wait...is that the correct usage of "posit"?

Checking....please stand by.

Image credit: Nitra

Hrrrmmm. Not really. Posit is more of putting forth a statement for debate or discussion. I just need an answer, not a discussion. FACTS!

Okay, here's the answer. No hurricanes for Cali, because wind and water. There's that sorted.

Here's the longer, more factful answer. According to people who know things about oceans and hurricanes (Chris W. Landsea and Kerry Emmanuel) they need a source of warm water to form and be maintained. The hurricanes, not the people. We all know how people are formed and maintained, right? Right?!

Factful is a word if I say it is. Also, are we just gonna ignore the whole "guy who researches hurricanes is named Landsea" thing? We are? Okay.

Anyway, a hurricane needs warm water, above 80° F (that's 26.5° C). That's thermal energy, baby! When a hurricane is born, they form over the warm water in the tropics and subtropics and then the move in a general westward direction with the tradewinds and also drift towards the pole. The North pole. Because who'd want to drift towards the south pole? Except maybe penquins. And maybe hurricanes formed in the sounthern hemisphere, I don't know; this article wasn't about them. 

The west coast of the United States doesn't have water that warm, you have to go down to the coastline of central Mexico to find the requisite temperature water.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
says no penquins are expected on the central coast of Mexico for the next 48 hours.

So when a hurricane does form, as it moves north and west it tends and by the time it reaches the area off California it's getting cooler water (from 50° - 65° F) and can't maintain it's thermal energy, so no hurricane force winds. It downgrades to a tropical storm, which can still cause a lot of trouble because of the amount of rainfall.

So...there. Cali doesn't get hurricanes, but they do have drought, mudslides when the drought suddenly ends, and earthquakes. So there's that.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Merriam-Webster (defining mostly English words since 1828!)

Why do hurricanes hit the East Coast of the United States but never the West Coast? - Scientific American Online, October 21, 1999

National Hurricane Center and Central Pacific Hurricane Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 

Western Regional Climate Center

Nitra: YouTube and Website

I'm staring at a blank page.

Oh, how the blank page taunts me. 

I took a Domestika course--Creative Writing for Beginners: Bringing Your Story to Life. While I ultimately did not finish the course-- being unable to identify my "passion", the objective of the course being to write a short story about your passion through memories-- I did learn a few interesting techniques for helping to get unstuck when you're stuck. For when the blank page is MOCKING YOU. The instructor didn't mention any mocking, but you know what I mean, dear reader, do you not?

Perhaps you are asking, "But Corpus, isn't your passion writing? Or art? or somesuch?" And I would think, thank you for using the word somesuch; I like it and it's used so rarely these days.

Then I would say, "Yes, but...you have to be able to feel the passion and right now I kind of feel nothing but numb and achy at the same time." I did get an idea for a story, a story about the arguements I have in my head. A book about the different facets of myself that just seem to appear when I go about my day and the one I don't let out to play because she's not a nice person and you better believe she would just make a mess. She's gotten out before and it was not pleasant for me afterwards.

Of course it won't be a true story. No true events, that would be tedious and yet horrible for me and the reader. Just based on personal experience. 

Now this page is no longer blank. 

I do feel defeated for not having finished the course, but I did try very hard. I didn't quit at the first sign of frustration. It was not fault of the instructor, Shaun Levin, he was very encouraging, helpful, and kind, and had useful information. I may look at other courses by him. But this course was not for me. Maybe choosing a course for absolute beginners was the problem. I think of myself as a beginner because I don't have a college degree and I haven't published anything. I'm always worried the more advanced courses are TOO advanced and I'll end up drowned and quit in misery.

But I did not quit in misery. I made a conscious, thought-out decision to put aside a course that didn't cost very much ($12.00? I think) and didn't have a grade or any instructor feedback at the end of it. Since I'm not getting anything out of it I want to free up that time I was spending on it to find other courses for editing, illustration, and self publishing. I don't need my books to have illustrations throughout but I would like to design the cover myself. And possibly write a few childrens books later.

Aaaannnnddd...I didn't use any of the techniques for getting unstuck today. Well, we need a picture, don't we? I like each entry to have at least one picture. Let's dig in my photos and see what we can find.

You can tell I'm in a mixed state (the numbness and apathy, "I just want to sleep" of depression and the scattered, zippy, crashy "No, we must play XBox allllll daaaaay!!!!!" of mania) when I used more...er...formal sounding language and fewer contractions.

Here's a peacock I drew! Insert screechy peacock noise here.
I used a tutorial.

I had a whole thing planned...

I wrote down so many blog ideas since my last blog post. 

And now...here I am! It's Saturday! Time to make a blog post! Be productive!

And I don't know what to do. Or rather, now I don't want to do any of them, at least not today. I'll just post the links I would use to research, how about that?

• I made polenta and it rocked. Let me tell you about it!
• I bought a globe and it was exhausting and I wasn't even the driver!
• I want old fashioned sealing wax for my letters but that's not good for the post office's sorting equipment. Probably.
• Is it fur or hair? Do animals have fur or hair? When you pet a cat you say you are stroking their fur, but if some of that fur gets on your clothes you say there is cat hair on your clothes. So is it fur or hair? What is the difference and does it really matter?
• Mist vs. Fog - What is the difference? I thought they came from different directions, but it seems it only looks like that.
• Lake vs Pond - Does size matter? It's a deep question. Check in later for more vagure sexual innuendo.
• a lot or alot - What's up with that? Merriam-Webster, bringing the puns while telling you which usage is correct. It's "a lot", by the way.

I wanted to do pictures for each one, but I can't handle that today.

This week has not been a great week. I've had a setback week, a week where it feels like everything is falling apart. It's hard to explain in detail without a long explanation of how my bipolar brain works, so setback week will have to sum it up. 

I feel like I should just stick to my routine no matter how much I feel like I hate it that week. I allowed myself to skip the gym this week and last week--I'm only going to the gym once a week right now. I was feeling so scattered and high anxiety I thought it would just be better if I stayed home and let my mind rest, but I still feel scattered and high anxiety and now I haven't been to the gym in two weeks.

So maybe just stay on schedule no matter what.

Okay. Let's try that.

I did buy a globe. I went to American Science and Surplus and bought a globe.

Afffricaaaaa....

It's a basic political globe, meaning it has all the boundry lines and current names of all the countries. I wanted the kind that had just landforms and elevations so you could feel the mountain ranges and no country borders, but that was too expensive.

And now it's sitting on my the shelf next to the plants, being all globey and cool. Looking at all that water makes me feel better. And seeing the how big the earth is and how small our space in it is...somehow that just makes me feel better. 

I also bought a few stones, including a polished ammonite slice. I like to hold it and look at the spirals, somehow it just makes me feel calmer.

My slice was not this perfect, but it works for me.

So, that is the Saturday blog post. Maybe I'll go out to the movies.


PS--these two photos were nicked from the American Science and Surplus website.

Living up to the past is really unnecessary and probably impossible.

I feel like I should write a blog post every day because I need to train my brain to write even when I don't feel like it, but I spend far too much time looking for images and then falling into the time suck of rereading my old blog posts and thinking, "Hey, that was a good idea, why didn't I keep doing that!" Or "hey, remember when we used to do that and we loved it? Why aren't we still doing that?"

And then I'm sad. Then I have to work my way out of sadness and dangit that takes up too much time. 

Maybe daily blog writing is not for me. I shall assign a blog updates to a week day. Maybe Saturday? Saturday or Sunday. One of those. And FIRMLY remind myself NOT to read old blog entries, I don't care how interesting you thought you were in the past, we want to write books, see? And we can't efficiently learn to do that when we're sad. 

Stop changing voice, it's sloppy.

And I think she would know.

I tried to verify this quote, but could only find it on other lists of quotes. So I don't know if Martina actually said this, but as platitudes go it's less platitudey than most.

So, this week's update is taken care of (twice) and next Saturday will be recorded in the bullet journal as the day to blog. This Saturday (or Sunday) my daughter and I are going to American Science and Surplus to buy a globe and just because it's darn fun and interesting there. 

I'd like to have walls full of world maps, but lets start with a globe. Then you can see how and where the continents and rivers and such lie on the planet. Lay? How they're situated. Earth is tilted on its axis is what I mean and some places aren't where you might think they are.

Globe photo from American Science and Surplus website.

I feel sad for the pet fish at the grocery store.

 I went to Meijer yesterday. Wednesday is Gym and Groceries day. I did not go to the gym because I woke up with a migraine expanding across the right side of my head (I had a detached sense of fascination that I could actually feel it expanding and hear miniscule noises as the pressure built) and while the Excedrin took care of most of it, I didn't want to push it. 

Photo of bitsy koi from the Meijer website. 
I don't think it's a legit brocaded carp, but it's pretty.

I was stressed as I entered Meijer: because I had a migraine, because I had to skip the gym and throw off my fragile healthy habit weekly routine, and just because I had to enter Meijer. I had my meal plans for the week and my list done the night before (Tuesday is meal planning and grocery list day and I did it even though I really was tired and finishing a task made me feel better). I remembered to bring my coupons and I knew my budget so all the preparation was done and still...anxiety. 

Legit koi in beautiful, peaceful, restful, brain-calming koi pond.
See, koi get big. So big. Lots of big.
Photo nicked from the Nualagi Ponds website.

Grocery stores are chaotic places, so many things, so many choices, so many temptations, so many people. But I need to be able to choose my groceries myself. I don't want other people doing it.

I write long sentences. I do try and break them up, but then I just go ahead and write more long sentences. Which I then have to take the time to break up. And then where has my point gone? It got lost in the long sentences. So here's another pretty fish to reward you.

Photo of Glo Tetra from the Meijer website.

I've been experimenting with entering the store at the other end, the drug store end. The theory is that the frozen and chilled food and produce will be collected at the end of the trip and less subject to thawing, warming, wilting, and crushing. (Use ALL the verbs!)

I had to buy cat litter and I passed by the fish tanks. I was immediately swept over by a desire to watch the fish and bring them home and have a tank for them and take care of them and watch them anytime I wanted.

But I'm a rational person -- sensible, logical, reasonable, pragmatic, whimsical, anxious...wait, what? I really want a fish tank and fishes to watch. I felt sad for them, because their holding tanks are boring: no pebbles, no plants, no place to hide and chill. I want the fishes to have a sort of proper home. How long will they live without a proper home? Poor fishes. They were still peaceful to watch as they floated in their burbling water.

Photo of shobunkin from the Meijer website.
This actually looks more koi-like

I have no place to put a proper aquarium and no money to buy a proper aquarium and no real concept of how to care for an aquarium and the fishes in it. I promised myself that every Gym and Grocery Wednesday I should stop by the fish tanks and entertain some peace before braving the chaos.

But I did find this aquarium video on YouTube and it will have to do. Maybe...maybe...I can buy a book about caring for fishes in home aquariums and learn what type of fishes live peaceably with each other and one day have a small aquarium with two or three fish.

...and it makes me giggle every time.

I realized yesterday that I haven't made a blog post in some time. It was much less some time than some of my previous not making a blog post in some time times, but nevertheless it was still an amount of time that was longer than the shorter amount of time I wanted it to be. Do you follow me? Good.

See, the blog isn't really supposed to be A Big Important Thing For Writing, it's supposed to be a number of smaller things. For writing, yes, but not writing big, important things...for the habit of writing and putting it out there. I do currently write on a regular basis, but right now it's mostly course work or journaling. The blog is for putting myself out there. How can I, one day, be brave enough to send my work to a literary agent if I can't even put my words into a blog that 99.99% of visitors find because Dorothy Parker said something clever one time and now people use the internet to figure it out where it comes from and what it might mean?

I've been trying to heal my brain, I think I told you, so no Facebook and no Instagram and I never did Twitter anyway, but I am still indulging in YouTube because their is some really interesting, intelligent, and fun content there and if you're lucky it happens all at once. And on days when I'm having issues, it really helps to have something to distract me that is all those things, and this week I've had Bill Wurtz on heavy rotation. The man is a gift to us and his history of the entire world, i guess is the best video ever. EVER. I really like most of his videos (his songs are really cool) but I actually start missing this video if I haven't watched it in a while.

Creative Property of Bill Wurtz
Thank you, Bill, for just being yourself and letting us join you sometimes.

Wait...why did I do this?

 I'm working through The Arist's Way by Julia Cameron. I'm finding it helpful, though dated. It was published in 1992, so I'm not really surprised that it's a bit lacking. But so far, while the exercises may be difficult in that "I have to examine myself and I don't waaaaaant tooooo" sort of way they have worked in generally the way she said they should, there's been slow progress, I feel accomplished, all that.

But last week, Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity, required a Reading Deprivation. It made me more than slightly annoyed, both in how it should be done and the reasons why and the reasons people have given her for why they couldn't do it. This lady, bless her successful, encouraging heart, has a lotta upper-middle class privilege going on with her.

I won't go in to all the reasons I didn't want to do this particular thing, they were not the reasons other people had given, I just did the week of reading deprivation, which threw off my fragile, newly formed routine set up to help me maintain healthy productive work habits. So I'm a wee bit cranky 'bout dat. And the Reading Deprivation didn't even do what it was supposed to, I think because the problem it's supposed to fix isn't a problem I had. So now I'm playing catch up and that's taking time away from my writing course work. Also, I had to take time off the writing course work, because even though it's an online video course, there's still reading and exercises involved, so I have to catch up on that too.

Listen to the Inner Voice when it rawrs. It knows things.

MY POINT IS....just because a smart person says a thing will do a thing for you, it may not and the voice in my head that said, "We don't have this problem. In fact, we have the opposite of this problem so we should skip this, it's just going to throw us off and we worked really hard to get here." I should have listened to that voice.

Several, a couple, a few, some, and none: A possible series, but no promises.

TWO is meant by a couple. A couple is always two. There is always two separate and distinct but occasionally exactly the same things in a couple. Do we have that down now? A couple is two things. They don't have to be the exact things and they don't have to be different, the only thing that they have to be is that however many things they are, when you count them, there is two, only two. And don't think you can make a couple by having three things but only counting two of them. That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works.

Okay, that's not truly my desk in the second picture, it's a free stock photo but I do actually have a pen and paper on my desk. Trust me.

Also, I do not own those galaxies, I don't care what that guy said, I am not responsible for the collision.

So endth the lesson. Go forth and...count a couple of things.

Old School

Letter writing is old school. Ollllld Schoooool. Writing a letter by hand on a piece of paper, putting it in the envelope, filling out the address, putting the stamp on. 

So much nostalgia. I haven't done it in so long. I have a lot of hand drawn blank greeting cards, cards I made myself, to sell as hand crafted items, you know? Well, they are just sitting there (not collecting dust, because I stored them properly, in sleeves) and I have a mission to write to a few people by snail mail. 

See, when every-modern-day-body communicates through social media, and you make a decision to cut out social media because it's heavily contributing to your poor mental health, you kind of lose communication with people.

Of course, this helps you realize who you really like communicating with because those will be the people you really, really miss. You miss their likes and comments and DMs and their own posts. 

And because I downgraded my phone to a flip phone to help keep me off the internet, texting is....problematic. If you've never had to text on an old style cell phone (as opposed to the ubiquitous smart phones of today) you would lose you're mind trying to do it. 

So...as I'm officially a classic this year (fifty years old) and can remember how people communicated before even cell phones and email...I decided to do that. Honestly I don't like talking on the phone. I prefer writing letters, even if I get nothing back. 

So I wrote a letter today to my very best friend, on a card I had made myself, and I wrote out her name and address and my name and return address, and looked up the postage to make sure, and put the stamps on (it was a larger card), and walked outside.

Yes, yes, I walked outside. I know. Oh, it is a really beautiful day today, it's so mild out...71 degrees F and sunny and my moss roses and nasturtiums are blooming. I walked down the driveway and put the letter in the mailbox and put the flag up.

Do you kids know about the flag? The little red flag on the mailbox that lets the postal carrier know you have outgoing mail? Before I walked out there I was unsure if mailboxes even still came with flags and was thinking I would have to walk down to the post office. Yeah, I'll walk down the driveway happily toda, but going to the post office...I might have to talk to people...(shudder).

But the flag was there and when I put it up I had such a wave of nostalgia and quiet satisfaction.

Hm.

500 Writing Prompts: You're running for President of the United States.

 From 500 Writing Prompts: You're running for President of the United States. What thing(s) from your past could your opposition use against you?

All the things. Why in the hell would I want to run for President of anything? I would NOT.

I suppose this prompt is meant to stir memories and encourage self-examination. But I cannot take this shit seriously. I would never, ever, ever want that much responsibity and attention. Not even to save the world. The world shoulda looked out for itself.

Hm...how about the fact that I never went to college and have no experience in anything that could facilitate being President. People want their President to appear to have achieved a higher education, even if the individual doesn't later employ that education.

That's it, that's where I'm stopping. 

This is not the movie you're looking for (maybe), but it's still pretty awesome.

 Alas. It seems The Friday Five blog is no more. I am sad. Well, I guess I should have done more of them when I could, hmmmmm? 

And now I have to figure out my own Friday blog idea. Noone is gonna think it up for me!

Shall I tell you how I went to the movies?

The Night House
Searchlight Pictures

I went to the movies. I wanted to see The Night House, but it's not showing near me and it's hard enough to make myself do my Artist's Date. It's good for me and I want to write and Julia Cameron's books have helped thousands of creative people for the reals, but even she says you'll be surprised at how hard it is to keep these dates with yourself. And it is, because even a seven dollar movie ticket feels like too much of a splurge on myself.

I really did want to see it, because I love me some mind-bendy slow-burn horror movie goodness, but my anxiety preferred I not drive an hour for a movie. Hopefully it'll show up on Netflix in six months. Or maybe at the AMC in a month or so.

So instead, I went to see a different mind-bendy sort of movie, it's a sort of sci fi story, in that "twenty minutes in to the future" style. With Hugh Jackman.

I saw Reminiscence. And duuuude, I didn't know this until just this minute looking it up, it was written, directed, and produced by Lisa Joy. Yep, Girl Power. You did really good, lady, really good. It was excellent.

You'll have to look up your own picture of the Hugh Jackman eye-candy in a suit that is the movie poster, because now I'm suddenly bored with this and I really do have to make dinner. It's not delivery...it's DIGIORNO.

No energy for snappy titles...

....I seriously almost typed "no energy for snappy titties" and that's just not where I want to go today. Or any day, honestly, but extra not today.

I've been having trouble getting on task for restarting my book and spent a lot of energy being angry with myself for that, when I realized I've only been off social media for a month. And only this week, I've purged my YouTube subscriptions of anything... um, tense? Controversial? Loud? 

Let's go with anxiety provoking... I purged my YouTube subscriptions of almost all the anxiety provoking stuff...which leaves me with a few history subscriptions and a lot of crafting videos.

So off Facebook and Instagram for a month, strictly reduced YouTube, uh, input? this week. And reduced my news reading. And if you have a problem with not staying up on current events, I kindly direct you to go fuck yourself. I can give you a synopsis of current events that is always relevant: People are being horrible to each other all the time, all over the world, the climate sucks and people are dying because of it, and we are all roller coastering into hell every goddamn minute of our lives. The only unknown is when we will actually hit the gates...I like to imagine hell has gates, just like heaven has gates...and I'd rather remain blissfully ignorant while I try to drag myself into happiness. 

I think I need to draw the gates of hell. I'm intrigued now. 

So I've decided I DO NOT need to be working on my outline immediately. I've spent years getting myself into this creative oubliette, I can't claw my way out of it in a month. So I have assigned myself homework in the the form of restarting The Artist's Way and making that my class. I'm not going to college, but I can make my own homeschool, so doing the twelve week course is a good start. I can move on to The Vein of Gold.

I'm going to finish this or die trying.
juliacameronlive.com

domestika.org
I love that they have
instructors from around
the world.

I can also do courses on Domestika! My first one was Creative Bullet Journal: Planning and Creativity. I'm not really sure how well I did, honestly. It's not like
they're graded or anything, and I really like the collage technique she uses to decorate the different pages, but I also find I have little patience for fluff nowadays. I guess the idea of the course was to encourage people to find their own style to decorate their journals, while I already know my own style and how to decorate and combine colors and find collage materials and I just wanted to know how to do the layout of the journal part. 

I think I'll do okay once I finally settle on how to adapt the ideas to my own style. But it's going to be rough trying to find things in the journal for awhile. Yeah, you can have an Index and tabs and such, but it's still confusing at first.

Tune in another day, when I talk about the pens (Zebra BP! Pilot G2 Limited series! And more!!) I bought recently and how I like pens like some women like accessories.

500 Writing Prompts: When life gives you lemons...

 Finsih this sentence in three alternate and original ways: "When life gives you lemons..."

Lemon beside a Christmas cactus. GENIUS!

A) When life gives you lemons...say thank you and take those lemons, because lemons are expensive. Good quality lemons are fifty cents to a dollar each, depending on where you get them and the season. 

Not those bagged lemons, two dollars for a one pound bag. Those are useless. They're too small and they don't have the same flavor.

Wait...is life giving me bagged lemons? Eh...well, you can still use them. I wouldn't cook with them if I could avoid it, but you can still use them for cleaning. Or a still life to practice drawing and painting. Or putting them in random places in nature and taking pictures and making an art series out of them. Actually that's a pretty good idea, I might do that.

This was in the lemon image search, tagged "Green Lemons".
Um, Life? I'm not stupid. I know what lemons look like.
Those are not lemons.

Q)When life gives you lemons...check your fingers for hangnails and paper cuts, but life is an asshole like that sometimes. It thinks it's being all sneaky, giving you your favorite citrus fruit so you think you can just make lemon bars and tasty broiled swordfish steaks and candied lemon peel and all manner of sunny things, but life KNOWS you have a hangnail and it's just waiting to laugh at you. Life is a dick.

My house is not this nice. Not even close.
Still...#lifegoals.

7) When life gives you lemons...they're also giving you potential lemon trees. Thanks, Life! I've always wanted a lemon tree. Now if only I can keep the cats out of the pot until it's big enough to...scare the cats? Mess with their heads? Use harsh language at them? Because I'll have to put it in the living room in the winter and they'll probably mess with it. Cats are dicks too. 

___________________________

There. I thought those were pretty original. Good job, Self!

500 Writing Prompts: I you were to start a new business right this minute, what would it be? Describe it.

 500 Writing Prompts: I you were to start a new business right this minute, what would it be? Describe it.

See, what the hell? How does this help me write? Besides stoking my rage at how ridiculous these questions are and then I rant for twenty minutes and leave really annoyed but hey, I got my blog entry done right? Plowing through, because that's how good writing eventually gets done. Eventually, plowing through the boring, enraging, muck to get to the other side, where an agent awaits to see my genius and get me a contract. Right? RIGHT?! 

Because that's just stupid, start a business right this minute? Do you have any concept of how much planning needs to go into a business before it starts? Really starts, not just "I have a great idea" starts? And you can't just want to start a business, that's not how it works. Just because you have things you want to sell doesn't mean those things will sell. There has to be a market. And how much are you spending on materials? How much do you need to charge for each item to be able to pay your bills and buy new materials and be compensated for your labor? Will the market bear that price? If you want to make beautiful bookmarks, how many do you have to make and sell before you break even? If you make three gorgeous handcrafted bookmarks a day, with premium materials, what do you charge each? Fifteen dollars? Whose going to buy a fifteen dollar bookmark? Unless you're already famous and they're buying them because then it's a steal. But if you're already famous you could probably charge twenty-five dollars and they would sell.

Some bull shit.
Sis, you aint never gonna get that rock up that hill to stay,
the variables do not add up to success.
1847_Mythe_de_Sisyphe_Emile_Gregoire_

I think one of the problems of our society, in America at least, is the erroneous idea of "where there's a will, there's a way." is staunchly believed. If you just work hard enough you'll succeed and if you don't succeed well obviously you're just not working hard enough. Tell that to the thousands of  small business that got crushed by Walmart over the...what, fifty years I think...that it stomped it's way across the landscape of America. All those Mom and Pop places, are you telling me those family owned business didn't work hard enough? Those people put their own heart and soul and sweat and tears into those business for generations. They worked, many times they worked themselves into an early grave. So that grotesque prosperity gospel vein horseshit is just disgusting. I Instead of "give enough money and faith to god and he'll reward you," it's "give enough money and faith to an ideal and you'll be rewarded." It doesn't actually work like that.

And a business isn't fun and excitement and creativity 24/7, there's a ton of boring shit in there too, like sales and marketing and doing the books and figuring out how you're going to feed your kids when you don't sell enough hand made greeting cards. Oh, you have a regular job to cover the bills? So you're working two full time jobs, when do you sleep, cook, grocery shop, live? 

So my answer is, I wouldn't. I wouldn't start a business of any kind right this minute. I would never start a business on a whim. Ever. Because that's just stupid.

-------------------------------------------------

How does an exception prove a rule? For anyone who thinks to chime in, "Oh yeah, well so-and-so started their widget business with a dream and two dollars, look where they are now! They did it through hard work." No, they didn't. They may have worked hard, but they didn't succeed just through hard work. A whole lot of other variables had to be in their favor. Hard work is the last on the list, not the first.

And this is not an "eat the rich," rant, this is a "stop lying to people to make them feel like shit when they need help and to excuse your robber baron activities," rant. 

The efforts of Sisyphus were not noble,
they were a punishment for being an asshole.
He didn't get a reward for all his pushing. 
The odds were not in his favor. 

And no, Albert, the struggle is NOT enough to fill one's heart. We do not have to imagine Sisyphus happy. What a load of crap. This is why people don't want to hang out with you, Albert.

Some days...you just feel old.

 This is my year 50, as I think I wrote a few days, a week, whatever ago, and some days I just feel old. In my heart as well as my body. Most of the time it's my body looking bleh and I get shocked by it, because I feel pretty young in my head, like around...33 maybe. But today I feel old.

Here is a picture of a tiny snail shell I found
 in my newly purchased juniper bonsai tree. 
Isn't it cute? I don't think there's a live snail in there.

And today I'm supposed to be continuing my new vigor for moving forward and starting fresh and I just....my brain just...I was overwhelmed by the thought that I had to rewrite everything from almost scratch...I have a large portion of my original NANO work printed and the rewrites of sections printed, but I didn't have any outlines or character sheets and I was exhausted at the fact that I had to rewrite all that and HEY, lo and behold, I found out one of the thumb drives I have in my desk drawer actually has a ton of stuff on it and I don't have to rewrite it...

Yeah, now I have to print all of that and sift through it. Organize it. Because there's a lot of stuff there, which I sort of dumped all together on the drive when my laptop had to get worked on and I ended up losing the motherboard. 

And suddenly I'm so mentally exhausted. And here's a completely unrelated fact that's also contributing to my feeling old. The sun is coming in the window just right that I can see my own reflection in the computer screen and while you'd think that such an indistinct reflection wouldn't show many details it's fucking sunlight and is making me look like I feel (OLD) and I don't fucking want to look at that for hours.

I think...I think I will make an executive decision for today. I did my Morning Pages, I'm doing my blog entry. And then instead of plowing into this, right now this morning, I'm going to make a brain switch and work on some embroidery. I have several projects planned, I call them the Humanity Series. I'll explain that later. I have the thread and the fabric to start the first one. So I'm going to do that.

Some garden stuff. Deal with it.

Here's my summer savory. It's very difficult to get a decent picture of. It's a beautiful airy little plant that sends up long, long stems with small leaves and tiny beautiful purple flower but manages to stay up right and just looks so fairy like and lovely in real life but trying to get a picture to do it justice was impossible. for me anyway. 

Bzzzz.

We didn't plant our own sunflowers this year, but some came up nonetheless. We planted some the past two years and got some volunteers this year. This one is by the back porch, not much higher than the railing. It was a dwarf variety. The honeybees like it very much.

Another volunteer in back of the house, where we planted traditional sunflowers two years ago, and it' is a MONSTER. The stalk is nearly as big as my wrist at the base and look how tall it is, hovering well over the gutters of the garage behind it. I don't know if any pollinators are visiting it because it's too damn tall. It's doing quite well. The cucumbers next to it...not so much. A bummer, they did much better last year.

On the top (or left): That's the delicate little flowers of the dill plant, this particular plant is not very...."leafy? When you see fresh dill bunches at the market they have lots of feathery, er, leaves. I don't know what else to call them. I have yet to grow any dill that looks like the feathery bunches in the market and I want to know why. It's probably variety, but I've tried several varieties now and haven't found one yet. I will though!

And on the bottom (or right) is Sweet Thai basil gone to flower, which it did stunningly quickly.

And we'll finish up with this beauty, this is an ornamental pepper call black pearl. Isn't it just a stunner? I love it, I want to save some of the seeds to see if I can grow my own next year, for borders. I think it would make an interesting contrast with my creeping jenny up front, or even in a container with dwarf Alaska nasturtiums.

When you do a bunch of thinking and it all leads nowhere. I don't even feel like looking for pictures.

 From 500 Writing Prompts: Create a new character for the Lord of the Rings series. Write up a brief description of them and how they would change a major event in the story.

Eh....for the movies or for the books? There is a dearth of female presence in the books. Yes, there's Galadriel and Eowyn, but that's two. Just two who get any kind of a proper speaking part. And they take no real part in the actual journey, except Eowyn at the end and she had to sneak in. Now I can understand why that is, because of the time Tolkien was writing in and how the journey and the battles and such were an allegory for World War I, which he'd fought in as a young man and was much changed by. Women were the pretty things you thought about in the misery you found yourself in, the thing you fought to get home to.

Still, as a female reader in the late 20th century as I was when I first read the books, one does get sick of constantly hearing men's stories. Galadriel was a Elven queen and Eowyn was a noble woman, a shieldmaiden of Rohan. A story about a tough regular woman would have been nice. Oh, there was Goldberry in there too, Tom Bombadil's wife, all fluttery and beautiful, and there were glimpses of Arwen but she didn't really do much in the book but she's also a Elven princess.

When you've had years and years and years and YEARS of men's stories, men's bonding, men's talking, you get sick of them and would like to see a character you can relate too. A regular woman who does a few extraordinary things herself. Even if she just relays some wisdom that makes a difference. Or saves an important (plot related) person from straight up dying. Or leads them part of the way because they're lost, because yeah, Aragorn was a ranger, but your telling me he knew every inch of that land and never got lost ever? 

So...I guess that's my character. An old woman, maybe she lives out in the middle of nowhere because most of the story takes place in the middle of nowhere. Should she be an old wise woman? How about she's the widow of a huntsman. She's the widow of a huntsman, so she would know the terrain and such, and she comes upon them one day, while they're walking the oldest hunting trails and she tells them that the way they're going is...maybe the bridge is washed out...or there's goblins around, or an orc raiding party, she had to kill some of them, she has a bow and arrow and an axe, like a regular splitting axe, just a small one. And a knife. In her boot.

But how would this change a major event in the story? I don't really want to change any of the major events of the story, you change major events it impacts other major events and I just don't like where this is going.

I decided I don't really care to change a major event. But that would mean her part could be cut too easily. I'm tired of this now.

Happiness cannot be bought, but you can steam clean your carpets with a rented Rug Doctor and that's worth it in the end.

From 500 Writing Prompts: 

I would love to jump into a pile of...hm, well my knee-jerk reaction is money, who wouldn't love to jump into a pile of money, because that would mean I own a pile of money, but the prompt says nothing about the contents of the pile belonging to me. 

"Money doesn't buy you happiness, but at least you'll have nice things to wear while you're depressed." That's from a Dolly Parton movie, I'm not going to look up which one because I'm trying to stick to my one hour of writing and blog entry-ing every day and I don't think it truly counts as a full hour of writing if I'm looking up Dolly Parton movies and trying to find amusing pictures.

Of course the pile of money is only useful for me if it's USD.
If it's Weimar Republic papiermarks or something of that ilk, it's pretty useless.

Yes, money doesn't buy you happiness. I think a more realistic statement is happiness cannot be bought. What money can bring is relative peace of mind. When you don't have to worry about paying the bills, when you're not constantly plagued by a varying level of anxiety over the possibility of your car breaking down or your furnace dying in November or developing gall stones severe enough to need surgery--all things that have happened in our family... if you don't have to be anxious about an emergency wiping out your savings... if you get to know that you can retire and not have to eat cat food and freeze to death... it's a hell of a lot easier to rest at night.

We've gotten off track. A bit. So, honestly I don't know that I'd LOVE to jump into a pile of anything, if it wasn't a pile of money that I'd earned. What's a thing that I like? Kittens, kittens are lovely, but I'm not going to jump into a pile of kittens. First of all, it would injure the kittens. But how do make a big enough pile of kittens for there to be a possibility of jumping into? Wouldn't the kittens at the bottom get smothered? And kittens are squirmy. So squirmy. So, not kittens.

Do not jump in the kittens, you monster.

Kids usually like jumping into a pile of leaves, in fact I have fond memories and pictures even, of my own children in piles of leaves. But as a grown up....rolling around in scratchy leaves that possibly have bugs in them and which I'd then have to rake up myself...no. Not leaves.

How about silk? How about jumping into a pile of silk, just a pile of silk fabric? Silk is lovely, it feels delicious on skin. I was going to say silk and fur, but I don't need animals to die just so I can roll around on their skins. But silk, yes. 

Aaaannnd....I still have thirty-four minutes left to go. You know, I think this would be better if I wrote my actual stories for an hour. I still want to do a daily blog entry, but I don't want to just keep thrashing away at the keys to make sure I get an entire hour in. That would make a really boring blog entry, I feel. Really long and boring.

I'm going to make the executive decision to end this entry ahead of the timer. I did my three long hand Morning Pages this morning. I have an online course on creating a bullet journal I'm in the middle of and I just collected all my materials. I need to make my inspiration dashboard.

The emptiness of the title line bothers me.

 

This is Toby. He has a chonk heart. 

Yesterday I was cleaning out my email and found one from Starbucks, telling me that the application I had submitted (two freaking years ago) was over sixty days old...yeah, it would be. That's what happens when you wait two years to contact someone. Wow, they must be desperate. But I am not. 

It (they?) requested that if I still wished to be considered I should resubmit my application. No freaking way, not now. 

Today I cleaned the bathroom rugs and floors and the kitchen rug and floor. I cleaned and was happy with what and how I cleaned and then I sat down for a little break and realized how much of the house is still so dirty. Like, I only cleaned the rugs and floors, there's still more floors and more things above the floors. This is what happens when one is depressed for a long time. When you finally come out of that depression there is so much to do. There is ALL THE THINGS to do. And then people say, "hey, that's great! It looks good! I'm glad to see you feel better!" 

And then proceed to do zero to help it stay that way. Fuck all. 

Get the hell out of my kitchen.

This is why Moms feel like servants. Because not only do they often do a lion's share of the cleaning, people don't help KEEP things clean. They'll leave they're dirty dishes and uncleaned lunchboxes in the kitchen (I peeked inside...and I'm pissed about him leaving a good container in there. I refuse to take it out and it's our lunch salad container and he'd better actually WASH it because if he leaves it for me I'll throw it away.) Dirty shoes by the dozen in the door way. Dirty socks. Food wrappers. For Christ's sake, there is a trash can in every room, USE THEM.

I don't think this is going well. I can't find the patience today. I don't want to be boring and complaining is boring. But I need to do my hour a day. Sometimes you have to push through a lot of dreck to get to the good stuff. Set a habit, set a habit, set a habit. I did do my morning pages today. I'm getting hungry and I kind of want to make loaded baked potatoes for dinner but we don't have any sour cream. I wonder if the Dollar General has any sour cream.

Change is the only constant

Moss roses in my front yard. Also called portulaca.

Here is a picture of my moss roses. Aren't they lovely? They just bloom and bloom and bloom. I'm so pleased with them.

This picture is HERE instead of being posted to Facebook or Instagram because I turned fifty and decided I'm going to make some changes because my life is not what I want it to be. The first thing I did was downgrade to a flip phone. Know what you can't do with a flip phone? Browse the internet.

Not entirely correct, the flip phones they make now are smart flips, you can technically get on the internet with them but the phone screen is so tiny it's useless.

I had too much input at my fingertips all the time. So I fixed that. Now I have a phone that is mostly just a phone. I can text on it but it's old school texting and a pain in the ass for anything but short messages. 

And on July 18, 2021 I swore off Facebook and Instagram for a year and a day. Those are the only two social media platforms I use. Tik Tok annoyed the hell out of me, and I know I would loathe Twitter. 

On that fateful day...It was a Sunday! I had my daughter change my Facebook password and hide it from me. We didn't have to change the Instagram password, apparently someone in Russia (no fooling, the notice said the attempt was from St. Petersburg, Russia this past May) and Instagram shut that shit down and said I needed to change my password. So I can't even get in to that. I only used it on my phone anyway (my old phone) although I guess it's possible to use in on my laptop too. I deleted the app off the device...it's not a phone anymore because we switched the SIM card, but you can still use it to play games and access the internet. And take photos. I really like taking photos with it. The new flip phone camera is...utilitarian shall we say. Does not take great pictures and no front facing camera, so no selfie temptations.

So my current short term goals are...organize my office (in progress, looking much better, I can use my desk now) and write EVERY DAY. That's it, that's my two hard and fast goals to concentrate on. There is definitely a lot more I want to accomplish, but that's it for now.

I feel like this is a wall of text and I need to break it up with another picture. So...here!

I made these bubbles all by myself! I took the picture too.

I can't figure out how to import the pictures from my (old phone) device to my laptop. You used to be able to connect the phone to the laptop with the USB cable and just access the phone's picture gallery. But now anymore. It can be done, it's just confusing for me now. I'll figure it out. But the point of all this IS....

 This picture is here, because it's not there and I was getting anxious about not being able to share my pretty picture. Will anyone actually see it here? I doubt it. But it has the POTENTIAL to be seen.